Engine Fundamentals of an Automobile
Atoms : Atoms are the basic "building blocks" of the world. They are extremely tiny. There are about 100 billion billion atoms in a single drop of water! There are about a hundred varieties of atoms. Each has a special name: Gold, silver, aluminium, oxygen, hydrogen so on. About 20% of air is a gas called oxygen. Any substance made up of only one atom is called an element. Chemical reactions: Atoms of different elements can connect up with each other. The process is called chemical reaction. Chemical reactions go on all around us all the time. The burning of fuel in automobile engine is chemical reaction. We normally refer this chemical reaction as combustion. Combustion: Automotive fuels are made up mostly of two elements, hydrogen and carbon, which have the chemical symbols as H and C. It is therefore called as hydrocarbon (HC). During complete combustion of engine, these two elements unite with a third element, the gas oxygen (O). Oxygen forms about 20...